If the Holocaust was an event in history, it should be open to the routine critical examination to which all other historical events are open. Those who feel it right to argue against the “unique monstrosity” of the Germans should be free to do so. No one should be imprisoned for thought crimes. Contrary to how Hollywood and the Israeli-Firsters have it, the Holocaust story is not about Jews. It’s about Jews and Germans together, inseparable, for all time to come.

Monday, June 12, 2006

INTERDISCIPLINARY HOLOCAUST HISTORY

(I have only perused this article but it looks pretty interesting. Mr. Aly may respect the work of Hilberg rather more than some, but we'll forgive him that. I met Hilberg briefly in Toronto when I appeared as a witness at one of Ernst Zundel's trials in the mid-1980s [when I get the date right I'll put it in here]. I was struck by Hilberg's response to my question about whether he supported the right of the State to prosecute a man for thought crimes. Hilberg asked me to repeat the question. When I did, he waved his hand in a dismissive manner and said: "Oh, I'm not interested in that." He may have meant that he was not interested in intellectual freedom in that moment, or with respect to Zundel, or with respect to revisionism generally. I'll never know.

The Logic of Horror

The time is ripe for a complete overhaul of the historical contextualisation of the Holocaust. By Götz Aly

Die Zeit1 June, 2006.Translation: Nicholas Grindell

Historians, like journalists, ask their questions from a position in the present, but in the case of historians, these questions are directed backwards. Most history books quickly reach their sell-by date. Future generations will still be reading Goethe, Benn and Grass when Treitschke, Stürmer and Nipperdey are gathering dust. But Raul Hilberg's unwieldy three-volume work "The Destruction of the European Jews" will remain. The reason is simple: this book embodies the work of a man who has spent his entire life trying to see something that many of his contemporaries did not see and did not want to see. Hilberg does not judge, he reconstructs political processes. (Read more)